Author Note: The novel All Quiet on the Western Front was about World War 1 which began in 1914. Being the hundred year anniversary of the beginning of the war, I wanted to do something as commemoration. Not a celebration of war, but as a reminder of our history, and those who lost their lives fighting for what they wanted to protect.

I started this on Tumblr and it wouldn't let me rest until it was written. It's also been completed before publishing so no worrying about me neglecting another fanfic.

Also a huge thanks to Wordslinger for betaing for me.

Summary: Mustang and Hawkeye are shown that Truth has many faces and is ever changing, yet one truth within themselves is constant. RoyAi AU. WW1.

Disclaimer. I do not own FMA.

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Chapter 1

Truth Shall Set You Free

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it "- George Santayana

April 1913

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"Colonel!" A voice sang out across the sandy desert, echoing off the stone ruins and into the small military expedition camp site.

Colonel Riza Hawkeye ignored the playful holler coming from the ruins and she continued her report in hopes of having the opportunity to file it sometime soon. However she was at the mercy of the man currently trying to serenade her into coming down into the underground room he was working in. She looked at the smirk of Major Maes Hughes who had been dreamily reading a letter from his wife. "What?"

"He likes you." Maes batted his eyelashes at her and lowered his voice to mimic the hobby archaeologist/alchemist/adventurer Roy Mustang who spared no shame or amount of charm in pursuit of the Colonel. Maes was proud of his mock Roy voice as well as his mockery of Roy as he continued, "Oh Colonel, I have something to show you down in this secluded crypt. Please allow me, irresponsible but sexy Roy, to lure you into the hole in the ground so I can undermine your authority and hopefully your underwear..."

Riza glared at him. His mock Roy voice was awful, even if the context wasn't terribly inaccurate. "Stop."

Maes pouted and showed her a picture of his family. "The sooner he finds something, the sooner we go home. I miss my family and we're not going home until you agree to give him a family. So please, Colonel? Just this once..."

She heard Mustang's voice again, this time singing "My Queen, where art thou?"

Maes leaned over the creaky old field desk and whispered. "Go get yourself a husband."

Hawkeye flicked him between the eyes with her finger. "Get to work."

Hughes sat back in his folding chair and grinned. "I bet you can make an honest man out of him. Crack the whip, make him get his paperwork done. Make him turn over the artifacts he stole. Make him travel with us instead of that damned plane he flies everywhere like a lunatic. The man needs driving and flying lessons, he's like a natural disaster behind the wheel."

Riza narrowed her eyes at him and her voice lost all hints of humor as she asked, "What artifacts?"

Hughes heard Mustang's voice again calling for his beloved Colonel like a lonely hyena. "Oh, that box of people bits from the last site. What were they...oh the cremains of some dead Father and his seven sons? Falman's report is right here. He was cataloging the artifacts this morning, again, and discovered the urn and boxes had been replaced with a Chianti bottle filled with sand and seven matchboxes."

Riza stood up and slammed her fist on the table. Damn Mustang! He was exactly why she hated working with civilians- especially rich ones. He was brilliant and handsome and had his Daddy's money and Aunt's blackmail to open any door he wanted. He was a good guy, he was just annoying and needed to learn to play by the rules. Rule #1 was this was a military expedition and he was a civilian independent contractor. From Day 1 (or Day 17 when he actually showed up) Mustang flashed that melt-your-clothes-off smile at her and expected to run everything his way.

"Go get him." Hughes smiled and flashed the picture of his adorable daughter at her again. "Your kids are going to be so cute! Not as cute as mine, but cute."

Riza spun on her heels, annoyed that her second in command was clearly not on her side. From the beginning Hughes and Mustang hit it off, which she suspected was Mustang's way of accumulating allies and undermining her authority. He learned his lesson well from his daddy who built Mustang Motors from nothing by using his pretty face and silver tongue. Bill Mustang took a bankrupt machine factory and turn it into the corporation that now held a monopoly over anything that was a mode of transport that didn't eat hay. Even the government was surprised to find out he had them by the balls when the President discovered Mustang held all the military contracts and patents to every motorized invention of worth in the last two decades. So here she was, babysitting his spoiled son who could have been doing something amazing with his life instead of gallivanting all over the world looking for artifacts that related to his alchemy obsession.

"Colonel Hawkeye!"

There it was again; Roy calling her like he had any right to make her go to him. She was going to put her fist in his pretty little face when she got down into that dark chamber with him. What irritated her the most, by far, was that he was possibly the most intelligent individual she had ever met in her life. He earned every degree and doctorate he held, he could fix his own plane when he needed to and surprised her with his diplomacy and language skills at every turn. Even here in the desert, he managed to get help from some of the locals who preferred their isolation due to the persecution they often faced. She just wished he had some respect for the government's authority and would help his country instead of just selfishly looking to entertain himself with an obsolete science.

"Colonel!"

Yet here she was, ready to go climb down the ladder as he called for her like she was a dog. After everything she had done and worked so hard for in her military career, she was answering to a civilian. Maybe she was really disappointed in herself for falling for him, for letting herself be lead along by his dreams of finding this magic philosopher's stone in the desert and letting him fly her around in his plane so she could see the most incredible sights she had ever seen in her life. Listen to his incredible voice whisper such heart stopping words in her ear as she lay on his surprisingly fit body at night. She hated him for making her compromise her ethics, but loved him for showing her that she wasn't just the emotionless drone she had to be to make full Colonel in a male dominated military. So here she was, looking down at his face as he climbed up out of the darkness and squinted at the light above.

"I've got it, Riza!" Roy said with unbridled enthusiasm. "I found it! The Gate of Truth."

She squatted down as his head popped out of the hole in the ground and the shoddy handmade ladder creaked under him. And just like that her anger subsided, because of that pure and perfect smile on his face. Anger that she never realized was a driving force in her until she met him. Anger at her father, anger at society and anger at herself, that had been what helped her push past every hurdle to be where she was today. And in six months Roy Mustang found away to traverse the complicated and treacherous maze of of her complex persona and shine a light on her inner truth. Damned alchemists, always looking for truth. Despite her anger that she had built up on the walk over, it all slipped from her grasp as his eyes and smile told her that he wanted to share this with her. Not because she was the commander here, not because of some obligation he had to the military funding his adventure, but because he had found something he had been searching for and he wanted to share it with her. Still, she couldn't let him get away with everything. This damned man could drive her to the brink of ecstasy or insanity depending on his mood. "Really? Is it anywhere near that box of artifacts you took from the last dig site?"

Roy gave her an apologetic grin. "About that...I'm going to have to get creative with those reports..."

She groaned. "What did you do?"

"I sort of cooked them up into a philosopher's stone this morning." He said quickly and watched her anger start to brew so he rapidly descended the ladder and hollered up, "Come down here and I'll show you!"

"You cooked them?" She leaned over the hole, put her head down into the darkness to see if she could see him down in the chamber. "Mustang! What the hell is wrong with you? Those were priceless artifacts, they survived this desert and grave robbers but somehow they happen upon you and you destroy them?"

"Come down here and I'll show you." He called up to her and worked his way through the narrow corridor, over the rubble and rotted lumber and into the gate chamber where he had everything arranged on the floor in a semi-organized fashion. He had been working down there all morning and he scattered everything around the archaeological find of the century like it was his own personal office. He waited on her arrival and went ahead and lit a few torches to shed some more light on the transmutation circle etched into the wall.

Riza was back to wanting to punch him. He destroyed their find. Roy doing something so myopic in his pursuit of the bigger prize was not in the least surprising, but doing this to her after he knew she had reported the find to her superior made her hurt inside. Maybe she was wrong about him, maybe she set herself up to be humiliated and hurt by this man. If he destroyed the relics without a second thought, how much did he really care about her? He wasn't stupid, he knew that her career could be damaged by a failure of this proportion. This wasn't an operation of war, but it was a expedition by the military to enhance it's capabilities when they went to war. Mustang sold them on that promise, he also sold her on a promise that he loved her. As she looked at him, his handsome face lit up with the excitement of his find and she tried to focus on him. Not the mess on the floor, him. The unruly dark hair, his half unbuttoned muslin shirt, the way his pants seemed just a bit too snug around all the right places and his polo boots that kept out the desert sands. Oh, and that delicious smile on his boyish face that begged her to not notice the irreplaceable treasures scattered all over the floor.

Roy could see her face clearly now and he walked over to greet her with a kiss. He knew she was pissed however she needed plausible deniability if things didn't work out. He had to protect her and in doing so, he had to withhold rather important information from her. He felt her resistance ebb, her muscles relaxed a bit as his lips grazed over her chapped ones, pursed in frustration at him. He let out a shallow breath as he prepared to explain himself. "Just hear me out."

"You cooked them?" She pushed away from him and walked over to the mess of everything he had casually strewn across the floor like they were this mornings newspaper. Everything they had found in the last six months: Books, fragile parchment, the tiny wooden boxes that used to house the ashes of the 'sins', the urn that was the container for the individual they only knew as 'Father' and some scrolls written in a dead language. "Roy..."

"Riza..." He let his hand run down the length of her uniformed arm as she pulled away from him. The wool gabardine jacket was still buttoned fully despite the heat of the desert above. How she could wear that thing in the heat was beyond his comprehension, but she refused to breach protocol. As commander she was the one by which all standards were set and she would not allow a mere uniform to force her to stray from regulations. He loved that about her.

She turned to him and placed her finger on his lips to stop his loquacious tongue from saving him from this disaster he created. "No, Roy, right now you listen to me. You tell me you cooked our prize archaeological find, you have everything else we've collected down here thrown on the floor like it's your college dorm room and you have enough torches lit to deprave us of oxygen in less than five minutes! What...the...hell...were you thinking!"

Roy kissed her finger and received a glare in return. "I know oxygen like the back of my hand! I studied combustion in order to improve all the combustion engines my father's company is producing. I know oxygen and what is consumed by fire and how much time we have before two humans and seven torches suffocate us."

"Really." She put her hands on her hips. "How long?"

Roy clicked open his pocket watch and glanced at it. "Well before it was seventeen minutes but you're talking a lot and taking up time...so maybe fifteen now."

"How about if I leave?" She said and watched his face take on a look of panic. He shoved his pocket watch back into his pants and wrapped his arm around her.

"No, I swear Riza. I've found it." Roy walked her over to the wall and squeezed her. "This is it, the Gate of Truth."

"It's a carving in a rock." She sighed. "Roy, this isn't a joke! The military is expecting results!"

He let go of her and began to pick up the papers on the ground. "Ok, here's the concise version. What we had in those boxes, Father and his sins, was like a set of canopic jars and a cremated mummy all in one portable package. They're not meant to be worshiped like some pots of organs, they're ingredients!"

"Ingredients for what?" She asked and he turned and gave her a wink.

"A human."

"So you cooked them?" She covered her eyes with her hand and sighed. "Oh my God, I'm in love with a cannibal."

Roy shook his head and brought the stack of papers to her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "No, you're in love with an alchemist."

"Yes, much worse." She took the papers and he wrapped his arms around her again, placing his head on her shoulder as he pointed to lines of ancient text on the deteriorating parchment.

"This is the ingredient list for a human being. Just basic elements that make up our bodies. This here, is what alchemists are forgetting about when they tried human transmutation. The missing ingredient. Or as it's roughly translated here , 'a soul'." Roy nuzzled her and she didn't seem to appreciate the gesture. Yeah, she was still pissed about him cooking the dead guy.

"These are the documents we found in the ruins of Xerxes, which you spilled tea on!" She pulled away from him and shoved the cracking and chipped papers in his face. "Roughly translated as 'damaged beyond comprehension' by someone who should value this historical piece and not destroy it! Roy, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"It might look like tea, but really it's urine."

"Oh my God." She stared at him. "You're really insane aren't you? Or you're here to destroy the finds so the government can't compete with your Father's company!"

"That's really not insane, more of a crafty and brilliant plan." Roy gave her an apologetic grin as she looked like she was about to consider strangling him. "Riza, I'm not working for my father. I needed to determine what kind of disappearing ink they used before I tried to reveal it or I would destroy the message. So I had to test on the original paper to determine what they used."

"So why did you pee on over 75% of it?"

"I really needed to pee." He said and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "Look, you women think we have some amazing targeting system on these crotch cannons, but I think every toilet in existence proves otherwise. I was aiming for the bottom corner and missed."

She stared at him as that adorable blush touched his cheeks. Oh my God, he's talking about pissing on a priceless piece of ancient literature and I can't believe how in love I am with him at this moment. This man is a complete idiot and I love him. "Why didn't you just pee in a cup so you could control the flow?"

He ran his hands through his hair and grimaced. "See, this is why you're the Colonel and I'm just the scientist."

"You really just thought, "I need urine' and whipped it out didn't you?" She asked and he shrugged.

"I really needed to pee and..." He he looked over at his coffee cup that probably was a few days old. "I had an incident in college when that whole 'pee in a cup' thing came back to haunt me."

"Roy." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "We're about out of time, just gather up all this and we'll come back down when we can circulate more oxygen down here. "

"Oh, I fibbed about that. We have like 45 minutes." He said and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "You were really pissed and I knew if I didn't give you a sense of urgency you would have marched me out of here and arrested me."

"Why waste the effort? This place can be your perfect tomb." She let him take her hand and pull her over to his table in the corner.

"I made some forgeries of the documents anyway so you wouldn't get in trouble for what I had to do in the name of science." Roy grinned at her and saw that look of uncertainty on her face. Like she wasn't sure if she should be upset, impressed or appalled.

"You never intended to turn over any of the originals to me did you?" She was close enough to him she could see even the slightest facial muscle twitch on his face. She would know if he was lying, but she knew he was just going to tell her the truth.

"The originals should be studied like they were intended. Alchemy is about seeking truth, not hiding it away from the people because the government has a bigger plan." Her saw her eyes soften, this had been the topic of conversation on many cold nights in the desert as they lay in his cot talking until dawn. "Riza, this is someone's work they hid because they feared it would fall into the wrong hands. I can't ignore that, even if I believe in my country. I can't blindly accept that the government works for the people like you do, I know they don't. I know they only allow the people to know what they want because that's the best way to suffocate questions and independent thought. These papers around us are someone's life work, many people's life work. We can't hide that away in some archive."

"Roy, the government wants this so they can compete with your father. How is destroying the stranglehold of unregulated capitalism evil?" She asked and he looked down at her, close enough that he only needed to whisper for her to hear.

"Without the monopoly on transportation, the government would control everything. Just try taking back a country from that. The only way to prevent it is to stay ahead of it and educate people. This, this knowledge we unearthed, will create renewed interest in a field of study that is accessible to everyone. It's not like out modern science that required sophisticated equipment and takes it out of the hands of all but the privileged. Imagine the power of basic science in the hands of the common man!"

"Did you ever consider that maybe it was all hidden because it was for the greater good? That no one man should have so much power?" She asked and touched his cheek. Ever the man dedicated to his ideals, he could be blind to the most obvious. "That there is reason power is controlled, that laws are established and a balance of power needed. Competition begets advancements; monopolies maintain status quo."

"Governments never work for the people." He repeated. "Politics always get in the way because those in power want to manipulate it to benefit them. Everyone needs access to this knowledge, not just those people the government says have clearance to see it."

Riza put the papers down and hung her head. "Roy, we're going to die down here if you don't stop debating with me and start showing me what you found."

Roy nodded, "Sorry. Where were we?"

"You were peeing on someone's life work."

"Yes." He went over and picked up his notes. "The Xerxes document was more of a myth, some fairy tale they wrote to hide the notes on the backside that were in disappearing ink."

"Urine."

"Yes. So I was able to use a specific light spectrum with my light-box to read the text. It's translated here. What it really is about is the creation of a philosopher's stone. The ancients just held it in such high regard they called it a 'soul' in code. Eventually when it was re-translated and re-coded, they just ended up writing it as 'human' instead of 'soul'. "

"What if your fabled stone is really made up of people?" Riza asked and pointed to the boxes. "What if those were really remains you put in the mixing bowl. How can you talk about preserving knowledge if you're going to just be so callous with the ashes of a human being?"

Roy took out the stone from his pocket that he had created this morning in his tent. " The containers were ingredients, they're sins not sons like Hughes keeps calling them. The minerals and elements that make up a human being are not enough to create a life. A soul animates the body. Sins, make it human...fallible and imperfect. Our bodies are machines, made up of pure elements, but to make them a human being you add a soul. A soul that is comprised of failings, sins, and also a cognitive life-force. That is Father and his seven deadly sins over there, now combined with the basic makeup of a human being...cooked and reduced into a philosopher's stone."

Riza's eyes took in the shiny red stone and thought this moment should have been more dramatic. Maybe the heavens opening up and angels singing, but instead she was looking at a man holding a red rock he made out of artifacts and she wanted to smack him. "Roy..."

"There's more." He said and walked over to the wall. "This goes in the middle of this transmutation circle on the wall. I made a casting using some wax and made this stone with that form. So according to that scroll that we got from the ruins at Xerxes, the final piece to make this all come together is this little stone. It's the energy required to make alchemy work."

She got a weird chill as she watched him place the stone in the hole in the wall and hold it there. The etching in the wall was perfect and precise and it boggled the mind to imagine someone carving that into the stone. There were no chips in it, as you would expect from someone chiseling a complex transmutation circle into solid rock. He was right, humans weren't perfect. Nothing was perfect in this world that was made or touched by man, so why was this circle so damned perfect? "Roy, there has to be a reason someone scattered all these components around this desert. What does this transmutation circle even do?"

"It opens the gate of truth." He said and looked back over at her. "Truth. Enlightenment. Knowledge. Everything mankind wanted to know, but we are only an ingredient in the grand scheme of things."

"Roy." She walked over and her gut told her something wasn't right. That gut feeling had saved her so many times and she wasn't going to ignore it.

Roy placed his hand on the etching and let his fingers roll over the cuts in the stone. His eyes took in all the ancient runes he had studied, their meaning and what they all meant together. Then he took away his hand from the stone and it didn't fall out. He moved his hand over to brace himself against the wall and stared into it, lost in the search for something he wanted with such intensity he didn't he feel Riza's hand on him until a jolt of something passed from his right hand, through his body and to his left hand. His body tingled, like he'd been electrocuted. His heart stopped beating, his lungs stopped and his eyes stared directly into the stone unable to do anything else.

Riza saw the blue crackle of light circle his hand and felt his body tremor as it passed through him and into his other hand, the etching on the stone now filling with that crisp blue light. She wrapped her arms around his waist to try and pull him away as the light flowed like mercury around the flawless grooves cut in the stone, defying physics as it circulated like a liquid on a vertical surface. She tried to pull him from the wall, but he was almost magnetically locked on to it and unresponsive. "Roy!"

The next thing they saw was a burst of light that should have blinded them both, but it was so warm and welcoming that they couldn't close their eyes. Roy felt his heart restart and took in a deep breath, suddenly aware that Riza's arms were circling his chest. In that moment, he felt a power of something he couldn't even begin to understand and it excited him and frightened him at the same time. The glow encompassed them and drew them into it's embrace...a second before the grooves of the transmutation circle came to life in the form of a hundred little black arms that desired nothing else than to tear them apart.